120784-is-carbine-doing-it-again
Content ---- ---- ---- I have a level 50 character struggling to earn the Prestige required to buy entry-level endgame PvP gear who cordially disagrees with this statement. | |} ---- The next drop has always been planned for Q1 and during Zero to Fifty this week I announced things are still on track even though I couldn't announce a date publicly yet. I understand your frustration, but I assure you that you will begin to see things in the very near future. PS. I think you're right, Zero to Fifty needs more Clue ;) | |} ---- Fair enough. So, I would rephrase to: whatever it is you want to do in the game, that isn't PvP. | |} ---- OohOoh! It was Tony, in ThaCheez Factory, with a greatsword (because he has a hard time using his pistols... get it!?) Thanks for always keeping things lighthearted. :) | |} ---- I would, if I were you, definitely temper the anger you get from forum threads. Some people are here specifically to vent their spleens at something. What we do know is that NCSoft isn't going on an advertising blitz or changing anything until they're satisfied that the majority of those people will stay. Drop 4 might be that drop. It might not even be that; they may want to do something about the PVP situation first since that's been the most voluminous amount of complaints comes from there. It's hard to say. Right now, though, I think they know they are growing, very slowly, from word-of-mouth. To make that advertising money worthwhile, they need to make sure that their ducks are in a row so that a lot of lapsed players return, whether it's for PVP, casual PVE, or whatever they felt the game lacked. Until then, word-of-mouth is probably the best advertisement they can get, since it costs them nothing and has been the most effective for them so far. | |} ---- ---- ---- Here's hoping. They could probably do with some kind of massive PVP fix. When did they say the Warplot numbers adjustments were coming in? | |} ---- are you referring to the downsize of 40v40 requirement for warplots? If so that change came with drop 3. It is now 30v30 and are still the most difficult aspect of this game to assemble with literally no reward for doing so. We've been running them every weekend for almost 2 months now and not one person is over 1400 rating. I mean 40 man raids rewards legendaries...what should a 60 man raid reward? artifacts? The highest ranked players are in gatlike and we are currently 9 wins and 1 loss, still havent broken 1400 rating. | |} ---- According to http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/192028.pdf?attachmentId=192028, they are shrinking, and not slowly. Earnings have been down by more than half between Q3 and Q4. Projected earnings are a slow decrease. | |} ---- Maybe we can start with cutting things like Zero to Fifty. <100 twitch viewers for 1 hour to give away a plush doll and jump around in circles? Better of just running events like a costume contest or housing contest, once a week. Maybe 15 minutes time segments of actual quality development information, 15 minutes of spotlight on Raid Accomplishments / PvP rankings, 15 minutes guest speaker lead talking about the progress of their big project they're working on, and then 15 minutes to fill things like community interaction / player stream promotion and giveaways such as (giant fluffy teddy bear mount to ride around in Illium / Thayd to one lucky stream viewer) | |} ---- Just kind of hitching off of this and throwing out an idea for promotion stuff... Could have a monthly/weekly give away to people that submit fanart/fanfiction of aesthetic item codes. Just my own experience and is more prominent now that on networks such as DA, Tumblr, etc when an artist or writer puts fanart up it generates some interest for people. This seemed to help encourage people to do this form of promotion in Warhammer when they'd give skaven skin cloaks(which turned you into a skaven and it looked badass on a zealot) to artists and writers featured in their newsletters. I can only speak for myself, but when I put something up I usually get 3-10 questions each time regarding Wildstar so far. ANYWAY... Also I can kind of agree with Eclips, I think Zero to Fifty is a nice little community thing, but it really doesn't interest me personally much. I managed to watch a few, but really miss the nexus report more. I feel like something more along the lines of dev(s) playing on the PTR/inhouse build showing off the changes and experiencing it with players in some cases would be better. I remember the most exciting thing to watch ever was when devs showed off the UI revamp and people went nuts in a good way, but they also didn't promise anything and said it was a work in progress to evade the "BUT YOU SAID X!" issue. The other thing is not everyone who watches those streams from what I've seen actually play on the PTR and aren't aware of all the changes put on them, so streaming that stuff would be great way to let those players see the new stuff coming. | |} ---- ---- There's speculation that Wildstar's player population is older: Job, family, etc. I'm on the US East Coast and I'm still at work when it airs so of course I'm not going to join the stream. That said, more "meat" would be welcome. | |} ---- You miss it? How do you think I feel? Doing a TL;DR on the Nexus Report was so much easier. It was shorter, it had a lot more information to TL;DR, and the humor I got out of it was a lot more hilarious because the devs weren't always trying to be entertaining. That's just a personal note, though... Honestly, I think they stopped it because they were told to clam up and they don't have enough information they can tell us that would make it worthwhile to do nothing but an information stream. It'd be nice, I like to think the community could be mature enough to take information and not start pissing razors. That's just not how it's shaken out in the past. It's kind of sad. It was fun to be able to post questions about upcoming content to Jen Gordy that we're seeing with Drop 4. Why can't we have nice things? | |} ---- ---- You bring up another very distressing point, Zero to Fifty needs more Tim Curry from Clue | |} ---- Even if population was stable from Q3 to Q4 there would be an earnings decrease because there would be fewer box sales. So Q3 would have been a lot of box sales but Q4 would have been a mix of subs and box sales but probably fewer box sales than in Q3 netting fewer dollars overall. Basically any MMO will have higher earnings the quarter they release a new game or expac than they will during a "normal" quarter that is mostly just subs. Without specifics, we can't make a definite judgment on what the earnings decrease tells us about game population. Edit: I'm not denying a decrease in population or number of subscriptions, I'm not confirming it either. Just saying that a drop in sales from a launch quarter to a "regular" quarter is expected. Q4 to Q1 will likely be more informative. | |} ---- ---- ---- it fails because the community manager should be a kick ass player that loves the game. not somebody that plays it for a paycheck. | |} ---- Every time someone mentions that a new MMO has problems of any kind someone else mentions Vanilla WoW. I'd like to point out that was a long time ago and, since then, you'd think the whole MMO genre would have learnt from at least Blizzard's mistakes. Sadly, many players are under the impression that just because Vanilla WoW (or any other MMO) commited certain mistakes, then every other MMO is justified in committing those mistakes all over again. It's the most hilarious thing: people saying that nobody should learn from history. I would also not recommend hyping anything until after we actually see how the community receives Drop 4. Excessive hype has a tendency to backfire because you create expectations that will be never met. Don't hype Wildstar just yet. It was hyped to heck all the way until the release, and then nobody stayed thanks to that hype. Instead make it a nice and fun title. | |} ---- You're right, people don't learn. Time after time, MMOs come out and have issues everywhere, as history shows. But we still get these people who think, "It happened before, it shouldn't happen again!" What kind of world do you live in where you don't have to deal with redundancies? Yup, quite hilarious that people don't learn from history and expect MMOs to have a smooth, shiney first year. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- It is fascinating actually, looking at the GW2 comparison. I played that game before wildstar came out, and made the whole hog transition to shelve that game while I have been playing this game. I much prefer the development team on this game and how they interact with the community to GW2, however GW2 understood the importance of content releases and hype. They never figured out how to make PVE challenging in that game really, but boy did they ever get the formula right for the lore/casual and large scale PVP people. And the game is free to play, which is a huge turn on to people who don't have a lot of time to devote to a game. Concerning population between the games, when they went to "mega server" technology in GW2, you would almost always end up in a packed overflow server, tons of people, it felt very alive (and frustrating if you wanted on your home server that was full). Compare that to this game, which I haven't even seen a crowded area in months, let alone a "full" area. The cost of the subscription is obviously a problem for newer players, the negative feedback filtering around the internet is a problem, and the exclusivity of the content is a problem (attuned raiding). One of the incredibly effective parts of GW2 was that you could hop right into large scale pvp and small scale pvp at level 1. And there are actually people doing those in that game. It shocks me that Wildstar hasn't come up with some plan or answer for PVP in general. It is down right baffling. Ranked pvp may as well not even be an option at this point, and leaving it there just reminds people what a flop it was. Can a game like this come back from where it is right now? How do you bring in 100s of 1000s of new players at the state the game is in, even after the next drop, which by and large does not address any of the concerns of the new player? And in my opionion, this game beats that game hands down, even with a monthly subscription... if it had more players. | |} ----